So here we go back to the red herring; the rape exception.
Just because that I would understand the pain that a rape victim would go through, the fact that she did not consent to carrying that man’s child, and the fact that no marriage, love, or otherwise consensual contact caused that child to be conceived, and as such, would feel that she should be able to terminate that pregancy…
makes it inconsistent that I don’t think that every two-bit whore in the country should be able to get an abortion.
I don’t see the contradiction. Sure the child being aborted is a living being. That child has no moral right to exist based upon his creation. The child has no legal right to exist based upon the rapist’s intrusion on his mother’s body.
If the mother wants to carry the child to term, then she is a saint. But just because I wouldn’t require it under law doesn’t make me inconsistent with my belief that a fetus is human life…
Well, certainly from your perspective, yes. But from (most) people who are willing to have an abortion, that which they are aborting is not a person, or whatever standard they use. For them, the point at which it becomes a person/life/so on is much later on. Certainly you can say that the objective matter is, that’s a person/life/so forth, but responsibility I would say is a subjective matter. People who get abortions generally honestly believe that they’re doing the responsible thing. They might be wrong, but that’s certainly what they believe.
IOW, you shouldn’t slam such people for not being responsible, because they think they are being responsible. Feel free to slam them for being wrong about personhood/life/so on, though.
You’re right, of course. Self-determination, at it’s heart, means that someone has many options avaliable to them, and that’s a good thing. The decision itself may certainly be a bad one (and sadly frequently is, but hey, that’s life ;)).
My point more though was that self-determination in this way isn’t limited to just the decision made after you find out you’re pregnant. It’s can be made before that, assuming it’s not an accident. People choose not to try and have kids all the time; by your logic of future kid’s rights trumping that of continued self-determination, that decision should be taken out of their hands just as the abortion one is. I know you’re actually in favour of abortion’s legality (if not happy with it happening, but then who is?) so I suppose really what your argument suggests is that there should be a societal attitude that deciding not to have kids (before pregnancy) is bad, which doesn’t really make much sense to me.
But that attitude exists! At least, it exists independent of the abortion debate. If you’re having an abortion, chances are you don’t consider that fetus or term-of-choice to be one of “us”. I’m sure if you asked 100 pro-choice and 100 pro-life people whether they agreed with “we should protect the weakest of us”, roughly similar amounts would agree. It’s not the attitude that’s different - it’s the definition of who (or what) is included. Really I would say your complaint is actually the foudation of this whole problem - “People should consider to be life what I consider to be life”.
And again, my rights to self-determination conflict with other people’s rights to exist all the time. It’s only if I’m pregnant that people start to act like that’s unacceptable.
Would you be okay with a law that required you to give blood every 56 days? How about to get put on a bone marrow donation list? How about giving up a kidney? How about giving up part of your liver? How about requiring that you be an organ donor if you die? Oh, and you have to pay for all of these procedures, too.
If all of these things are fine with you, I think you’re very unusual.
It’s not a red herring at all; rather it’s the fucking point of the thread.
Right - in some circumstances the feelings, thoughts and desires of the mother outweigh, in your opinion, the rights of the fetus, and sometimes they don’t.
Exactly the point I and others have been making. It’s the whore part that appears to bother you.
The inconsistency is that with which you give or take away what you consider to be the right to life of the fetus.
The concept of the morality of the fetus simply blows me away, however. I didn’t ever previously conceive of anyone being able to imagine any sort of morality on the part of a fetus! Wow, that’s just… I don’t know what to say.
jtgain, do you realize that every time you say something like this (and you’ve said stuff like this a lot), you lend credence to the (mostly mistaken, IMO) idea that people who are anti-abortion really just hate women?
Your first post made me so angry that I typed up a pit-worthy response, remembered I wasn’t in the pit, took a deep breath, and went to bed.
I didn’t express any great respect for human life. It whined about the fact that you had no choice (and were saddled with “punishing” child support), so you felt women shouldn’t have a choice either.
Just out of curiosity, were you anti-choice when your ex got pregnant?
If she wanted to either abort or transfer the fetus to him (if it were possible), this is a tough one that I’ve not thought about. If it was transfered to a 3rd party, one that had nothing at all to do with the creation of that fetus, that would be heroic, and refusing the transfer would not be immoral.
For the father it would fall back on the original conditions at the time before/during sex, later mutual agreement on the subject, and any new information that came up, perhaps like the mother is medically unfit to carry the child (and the safety of the transfer). If she said to him before they had sex ‘if I get pregnant I’m either transferring or aborting our child’, then it would be immoral for him to refuse the transfer and let their child die.
I’m glad you now can see, though you may not understand how, that some people are really not trying to punish the mother for having sex. I’m sure there are some that would use pregnancy as a punishment, but some really care about the humanity of the fetus.
No, I said the morality of the fetus! Morality! As if a fetus were capable of doing something moral or immoral. The idea of a fetus committing moral trespass or not having a moral right is so very very stupid that I’m shocked it ever occurred to anyone to say such a thing. A fetus as an actor capable of making choices that could even be evaluated for their morality is something I’d have to move to the pit to comment further upon.
If you really cared about the “humanity” of the fetus, you wouldn’t be able to trade it in some circumstances. If your concern were about unborn life, it wouldn’t be negotiable in some cases, any cases.
Finally, I have no idea what you think I just saw that would make me think any differently. What I just read was someone arguing for rape exceptions make a statement about how two bit whores should be denied a right extended to rape victims. It is, in fact, about punishing the people who are having sex.
Just what I was thinking. The only thing that makes me feel the decision to put down the dog is somewhat immoral (though I do still think it should be legal) is that a dog owner can try to find another owner for the dog. The dog is fully and easily transferrable.
If by some bizarre circumstance the dog could not be given to anyone else for care, I’d be more supportive of the decision to euthanize it.
And of course, not only is a fetus non-transferrable, but it is a parasite within one’s body, which is a whole other level of unacceptable servitude.
Wow. Can you truly not see that you are demonstrating the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement that is posited by the OP? It seems clear to me that your intolerance for abortion in general, but tolerance in the case of rape, reflects towering contempt and hatred for women who dare to have recreational (or professional) sex. If an “innocent” virgin is raped, suddenly the humanity of the fetus is irrelevant, because she didn’t, as **WhyNot **put it so eloquently, make her own bed.
And when you argue all in one post that “a fetus is a human being that deserves the right to life”, but (in the case of rape) “the fetus is an intruder and can be destroyed”, it’s not really clear what principle underlies your anti-abortion stance.
Do you believe that a fetus conceived via rape is just as innocent as a fetus conceived consensually? If yes, why should it matter how that fetus has came to be, if the fetus is just as guileless as any other fetus?
I’m interested in jtgain and kanicbird’s opinion about children who become pregnant. Twelve and thirteen year old mothers, unfortunately, are not unheard of. Kids can make stupid decisions, like having unprotected sex without a mature understanding of the consequences. Kids having babies rarely works out well for either the mothers or the babies. s abortion in these situations immoral?
THat’s an interesting question in particular, given the raising of issues of “consent” by folks here. We generally assume that children under 18 are incapable of giving consent, so they should be able to obtain an abortion, right?
Yes, it may be a bad one, and frequently is. And I believe that our feel-good society has led to the attitude that the morality doesn’t matter…it’s all about what makes us “happy.”
Actually, let me clarify something. I am not “in favor” of legal abortions. I accept them as a fact of life, and I believe that pro-lifers need to put their energies in other directions to help prevent abortions.
As far as your points go: First of all, I don’t think that deciding not to have kids before pregnancy and deciding not to go through with an existing pregnancy are the same thing at all. We are fortuante in this age we live in to not have to become pregnant (at least, for the most part). This is the greatest advancement in the history of mankind in terms of the self-determination of women. It has opened doors for us that could have never been opened in the past. It has increased our standard of living immensely. The downside to it is that we have become so in love with the idea of self-determination, that we are now willing to do things that normally we would not want to do (as you say, no one is happy about abortions), in order to preserve our lifestyles.
I think that you are right that there are some people who have abortions who do not believe the fetus to be “one of us,” as you say. This is the societal attitude I was speaking of…that avoiding the inconvenience of having a baby and keeping it or giving it up for adoption is of higher value than the fetus itself. That is a pretty amazing statement, I think.
I think there are also people who have abortions who do believe the fetus to be “one of us,” but they have other problems that prevent them from being able to carry through with the pregnancy. These situations are tragic, and as a society, I don’t believe that we do enough to help these women. Part of the reason that we don’t, IMO, is because we consider abortion to be an acceptable solution to the problem.
